Francis Fukuyama sometimes writes...

...and speaks like a man desperate not to take a position. But his methods of avoidance are enlivened by their deft application. In today's New York Times Book Review he offers an essay for the 100th anniversary of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Maybe Weber was right, maybe he was wrong, he sure looks right, he sure looks wrong, maybe culture counts in economics, maybe culture doesn't count, etc. Near the end of the essay, though, Fukuyama did produce a paragraph, lightweight for sure, that hits lightly on the mark:

SURPRISINGLY, the Weberian vision of a modernity characterized by ''specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart'' applies much more to modern Europe than to present-day America. Europe today is a continent that is peaceful, prosperous, rationally administered by the European Union and thoroughly secular. Europeans may continue to use terms like ''human rights'' and ''human dignity,'' which are rooted in the Christian values of their civilization, but few of them could give a coherent account of why they continue to believe in such things. The ghost of dead religious beliefs haunts Europe much more than it does America.

Fukuyama is being careful to keep one leg on either side of the fence here but, translated for meaning, what he is saying is that Europe has lost touch with its identity and the source of its own values. Europe is now a "floating city," without anchor. And that's the single most dangerous situation that a civilization can find itself in: not being able to find itself.